Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud: Essentials for Creating Projects

Work Smarter with Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud: Essentials for Creating Projects

Lesson 38 of 56

Work Smarter with Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator

Lesson Info

Work Smarter with Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator

Alright, now we're gonna look at what's called 'Graphic styles' a little bit because these are really super helpful. Why don't you click on the top circle here, the top shape. You can see in the appearance panel it's got the rough end and the stroke and the fill. These two shapes now have the same appearance. Right? The two. one in the back and the one in the front. Come over here to the right and what I want you to do is click on what's called the graphics style panel. Now, it may be in the appearance panel that you have out here. But let's go ahead and show the graphics styles. Now, the graphics style are a way for us to save appearance formatting and apply it to other objects so you can work really quickly, okay? With that shape selected, come to the graphics styles and you're gonna see a little button right here that says 'Make a new one' go ahead and click on that. All it really does is it captures the appearances properties of the selected object I actually use this a lot because...

I want to be able to create a series of buttons, a series of logos, icons, whatever. And I don't want to keep on reinventing the wheels for the specific features I want to have on there appearance wise. Now, you can see that with that shape selected, it's actually selected here, can you guys see the highlight around it? It's telling you that it's selected. Why don't you try and click on something else on here, another graphics style and apply it to that shape. You can see it's just gonna take the appearance properties and apply it. Then click back on the graphics style we just created and it should be there, okay? Click on the larger circle out here, the one we have in the back. This is going to be a little confusing, but. This graphics style is not applied to it, okay? Because we need it before. Here's what I want you to do. Just come over here and click on another graphics styles, like one of the ones in here, like pompadour or whatever. It's just applying all the stuff and then click on the graphic style added here. Okay? Now I know it looks the same as it did before But what we just did, was we just linked that shape to the graphics style. We can take that graphics style and update it and it will update every shape and object it hasn't applied which is awesome, okay? That's what we're going to do. So, I'm going to zoom out a bit here. Alright, so we've got shapes like this what I wanna do is with the big one selected, it doesn't matter which one is selected, both of them have the graphics style applied, you can see it over there because it's highlighted. But that one's selected. Come back to the appearance panel and let's maybe change the fill color, do something different. I'll change the fill color to something else. I'll say that one looks pretty good. That's fine. (Pauses for 3 seconds) Now, I'm going to tell you right now what I'm about to do is a little weird, okay? To update a graphics style, you can really only do it one way and in most programs if you have styles, you can like, double click on the styles and make changes to it. In this case you cannot. So here's how we update a style. You're gonna take the object it hasn't applied or had it applied that you just changed, okay? I'm going to options + drag it on top of the style over there. The thumbnail. I'm going to let go of my mouse and let go of the key. I'm going to do it again so you see it. Options + drag the shape on top of the thumbnail let go of the mouse, let go of the key. And you just updated your other shape too. Hopefully, that works. It's funky, I'm not gonna lie to ya. But it's just one of those things. Illustrator actually has a couple things that work like this if you want to update. That you can do this way. Alright, so we now have it set up. that looks pretty good, I hope. Every bodies doing okay. Why don't you go ahead and click on the center circle here the one that's got the wackiness going on I'm going to move it up just a little bit so we get it up a little further. I wanna make this one a little transparent just to give it a little look cause I think it's just a little too yellow thing right now So go ahead and select it. Come up top to the opacity. Now, we could also come over to the appearance panel and do it here or wherever you guys have. The appearance panel over there, I think. You can go to the appearance panel and do it here or you can come up top, it doesn't really matter. Let's change the opacity of that and make it a little bit more see through. A little more transparent. I'm going to tell you right now that once you take a shape that had a graphics styles applied to it, and you start messing with how it looks. It's no longer linked to the graphics style. Okay, so we'll not update now if I change that graphics style. Hopefully, that made sense. Okay. A lot of time they get... To be perfectly blunt, I use graphics styles as a starting point and I'm just like eh, whatever. I just keep moving. You know what I mean? But it's a great way to select a bunch of objects, get the base styling and the base formatting I need and kind of keep moving.

Class Description

The world’s top designers use Adobe® Illustrator® for its powerful, vector-based drawing environment – and now you can gain fluency in it, as well! Join Brian Woodfor a dynamic course on everything you need to know about Adobe Illustrator.By walking you through a series of projects on Adobe Illustrator, Brian will give you a comprehensive toolkit that will answer any need, including:

Getting started in Adobe Illustrator and familiarizing yourself with its workspace

Creating color using a variety of methods

Creating and transforming artwork, working with text, and importing images

Tricks and techniques for drawing: selecting and editing, and working with layers

KATIE Y

I am a pretty computer literate person but an Ai beginner i.e. I am completely new to the Creative Cloud/Adobe Illustrator. (This is also the first time I've used CreativeLive.) I think this course it is fantastic. The pace is good as is the content which progressed logically and covers all the basics you'd hope it would. The course is 2 full days' worth of material but it is broken down into segments so you can revisit or skip through as you need to. The presenter is really personable and easy to watch (even for me, a Londoner!). I would also say I think it is pretty good value for money -- I am currently enrolled on a part time course, basically doing the same sort of stuff, and I have to say this is better and a bit cheaper! I definitely recommend it to you!

jackflash

A brilliantly designed course. it's almost magic. It's everything you hope for in a follow-along software class. Brian Wood has engineered it so that you start on a project that just needs basics, and then you move on to more & more complicated projects, and almost without realizing it you've learned Illustrator. This doesn't just happen -- Wood has clearly put a LOT of effort into creating this course. Here's one trivial example: he doesn't overload you with a lot of keyboard shortcuts right at the beginning -- you start with the actions themselves, using the (admittedly tedious but easy) pulldown menus, and then after you're comfortable with what you're doing, he'll throw in the shortcut. It may seem obvious, but so many instructors feel they have to give you an extensive foundation of definitions, shortcuts, interfaces, etc., before you ever do anything. Good stuff to know, but you'll never remember it. Wood has you up and working almost immediately. And he's a joy to listen to, at a perfect pace. Highly recommended.

Philippe LIENARD

Top course. Very well explained, clear, good examples, pleasant teacher. I like it and recommend it.
One suggestion, it would be nice to have a detailed table of content of the course in the material. For instance, it took me quite a while to find back the part of the course where how to make a gear was explained.